Gyrex/Contributor Guide/Builds

Gyrex builds are produced on the Eclipse.org infrastructure. It's also possible to build locally. We use Maven and Tycho as our build technology which is also the standard build technology recommended by CBI.

Prerequisites

The build is modular with build-order dependencies between the modules. We do not use a single "aggregator" project that aggregates the various Git repositories. But the build process expects that repositories are cloned into the same parent directory in order to allow relative path reference in build scripts/descriptor files.

Maven 3

Download from http://maven.apache.org/download.html or use your Linux distribution provided version (whether it works depends on the distribution).Note: At the time of writing, Maven 3.0.4 has been used and tested.

Please ensure that the mvn executable is available in the PATH!

Git

Please ensure that a recent version of the git executable is on the PATH!

Depending on your operating system the setup might vary. A good setup guide is available at Set Up Git (GitHub).

Building on Windows

In general, the build should also work on Windows. However, please be aware that there might be some limitations which make it a difficult to produce good results. For example, the path length is limited. Thus, the code tree should not be cloned into an exciting deep hierarchy of folders.

Additionally, builds on Windows can't produce the correct permissions in produced archives on Linux. Therefore, good quality builds for multiple platforms should not be produced from a Windows system.

Build Environment Setup

The following instructions are required to prepare your build environment. Unless otherwise stated, they apply to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows platforms.

Maven Settings

To avoid getting hit by bug 365727 and to make sure your local environment configuration does not interfere with CBI build, make sure build user account does not have a Maven settings.xml

Running The Build

Multiple Streams

If you build multiple streams on the same system, you'll want to add '-Dmaven.repo.local=/some/directory/somewhere' to the end of each 'mvn' command to avoid collisions (using a different local repo for each stream). Most casual developers won't be affected.

Alternatively, you can add the additional argument to the MAVEN_OPTS environment variable instead.

On Windows use '-Dmaven.repo.local=C:\path\to\somewhere'.

Building directly from Eclipse

Instead of using Maven and Tycho, it is also possible to simply use the PDE Product Export wizard that's available in Eclipse. It requires to have the target platform configured and all Gyrex bundles imported in your workspace. The export can be started via File -> Export... -> Product configuration menu.

Note, however, that this is not recommended for producing official, production build results (to be published on Eclipse.org). But it's a convenient way of testing a product setup.

Build Process Insights

RelEng Project

The root for all build related stuff is the Gyrex RelEng (Release Engineering) project. It contains:

Target Definition

The Target Definition is used for dependency management. All dependencies are listed as p2 repositories hosted at Eclipse.

Product Configuration and Features

The Product Configuration generates the various downloadable artifacts (eg. Gyrex Server ZIP). It references Eclipse Features which define collection of bundles that are meant to be build/deployed together. There are two types of features - regular Gyrex features and dependency-only features. Gyrex features collect Gyrex bundles. Dependency-only feature collect all dependencies. This makes it easy to customize Gyrex based products with different dependencies by using custom features.

Headless Build Process

The build process is entirely based on CBI. CBI is the common build infrastructure at Eclipse.org which is based on Maven and Tycho and has some additional Maven plug-ins for signing of bundles/binaries, etc.

We use Hudson for CI. The build process on Hudson is as follows:

Checkout all Git repos into same directory

Invoke Maven using gyrex-releng/aggregator/pom.xml which will

Build target platform from target definition

Build modules referenced in POM

Assemble Gyrex Server Product

Produce final p2 Repo (including signing of artifacts when executed on Eclipse.org infrastructure with Maven profile)

Hudson Build Jobs

The integration job is used for producing I, S and R builds. Care must be taken when producing S and R builds. The results are automatically published to download.eclipse.org (when running on Eclipse.org infrastructure).